Container Centralen (CC) is undergoing a change in leadership. In late June, CC founder, President, and CEO Sonny Costin announced his retirement effective Sept. 30. John Paulsen, the current Vice President of Operations, will be promoted into role of CC President & CEO on Oct. 1.
Costin started CC 20 years ago because he saw an opportunity to offer growers a different shipping platform to get their live plants to retail garden centers.
“European growers had the benefit of a pooled-shipping platform (racks/carts) to deliver their plants to retailers for more than five decades before we got started in the U.S.,” Costin says. “It was clear that a similar service offered to North American growers had a strong likelihood of success.”
“When we started the company, there was nothing like it in the U.S.,” says Costin. “We took the opportunity to innovate with our service offers and especially with our RFID-based asset tracking technology.
“The support we’ve received from retailers and growers has been incredible. Our customers now make more than 2 million shipments per year on our racks to the 48 mainland U.S. states and Canada.”
Paulsen is a 15 year-plus veteran of the company, and the rest of the executive team is also staying on board.
“The leadership transition has been well planned and will sustain our very strong grower and retailer relationships,” Costin says. “We have some exciting projects underway including the use of artificial intelligence to predict rack recovery from retail locations so that CC and our customers can achieve improved efficiency on this key element of rack operation. There’s so much more to achieve and we have a great team in place to carry the business forward over the coming years.”
Learn more at https://www.cc-racks.com.
